Around Here editor/writer

Randall O’Barr will never forget the day last year when he drove from his home in Mt. Airy, Ga., to a rural road in Madison County where his twin sons were in a car wreck that killed one and seriously injured the other.

“One of the deputies told me that Roy was dead and I said, ‘Where’s Nathan?’ and he said, ‘They airlifted him out,’” O’Barr recalled. “That was a tough day for me. I had to stay there and talk to the coroner and then I had to drive to Atlanta to see about Nathan.”

The man whose car on June 14, 2013, crossed the center line on Friendship Church Road and crashed into the O’Barrs entered a guilty plea this month to homicide by vehicle and serious injury by vehicle. Alex Clay Fortson, 52, was sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $1,350 fine. Fortson has been transferred from the Madison County Jail to the state penitentiary in Jackson to serve his prison term.

Fortson was no stranger to law enforcement. He was a recidivist who had two habitual violator convictions, Northern Circuit District Attorney Parks White said Monday.

Fortson ran on foot from the wreck, authorities said. A DUI charge that was filed after the wreck was later dismissed.

“We’ll never know whether he was under the influence for certain because he wasn’t found until nine hours later, which by that time his blood did test negative for the presence of alcohol,” White said.

The wreck occurred at about 7:20 a.m. as 25-year-old Roy O’Barr was driving his restored 1964 Ford Fairlane from Toccoa to a part-time grassing cutting job in Danielsville. He worked full time for The Northeast Georgian newspaper.

“It was a difficult case. Mr. Fortson was apologetic and distraught at the time of sentencing,” White said.

Randall O’Barr also saw the man express remorse at the sentencing.

“In the beginning when this first started, the coroner told me he was remorseful. A couple of months after that he sent a jailhouse minister over here to my office and he said he was remorseful. I’ve been in court two or three times and the day he was sentenced is the only day I witnessed any kind of remorse,” the father said.

“It’s like the DA said. It’s time for him to be sorry,” O’Barr said. “He knew he had to face what was coming to him.”

O’Barr’s surviving son, Nathan, is still recovering from injuries, but has returned to work.

But Roy O’Barr died leaving behind a wife and 3-year-old daughter.

The little girl was at her grandparents’ home this past Saturday playing in the yard.

“She had her little cousin with her and she told him that me and her daddy had built the playhouse and swing set,” O’Barr said. “She remembers him.”

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